Like many people, my knowledge of Robert Fitzroy has long been limited to the sole fact that he was the captain of the H.M.S. Beagle during Charles Darwin’s famous voyage upon it. I’d read in Darwin’s own writings that he had held Fitzroy in high esteem, as well as passing mentions elsewhere that Fitzroy and […]
“Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder!…”
When the intellectual legacy of Charles Darwin is discussed, more often than not, the focus is on his “Origin;” however as anyone who has spent even a little time examining the life of this great Nineteenth Century polymath quickly comes to learn, his curiosity led him to inquire into a vast number of mysteries over the course of his life – and early among these was geology.
While On the Origin of Species is generally said to be Darwin’s most influential work, his The Voyage of the Beagle is likely his most approachable work for the general reader. And why wouldn’t it be? After all, first-person travelogues make for exciting reading, combining both the narrative of the adventure with the author’s running commentary upon it.